How can PHP developers efficiently convert date strings to Unix timestamps for database queries?

When working with date strings in PHP for database queries, it is efficient to convert them to Unix timestamps as it allows for easier comparison and manipulation of dates. To convert date strings to Unix timestamps, PHP developers can use the strtotime() function which parses any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp.

$dateString = "2022-01-15 12:30:00";
$unixTimestamp = strtotime($dateString);

echo $unixTimestamp;